This invention relates to medicine cabinets having a refrigerated storage space.
Medicine cabinets are conventionally positioned along the walls of bathrooms. They typically have a mirror on an external door, the door being hinged to provide access to the cabinet interior. When the door is swung open a storage space is exposed inside the cabinet, typically one having shelves on which are positioned drugs, cosmetics and other items useful in the bathroom.
Some sensitive cosmetics and other perishable bathroom items are designed to be stored only at refrigerated temperatures. Still others can be stored at some ambient temperatures, but not at the temperatures experienced during the summer in some tropical or desert climates. Thus, consumers will often split such items between those placed in conventional medicine cabinets and those placed in a conventional household refrigerator. However, this approach has a number of deficiencies.
For one thing, it is somewhat inconvenient to have to place sensitive items in two different locations. Someone may forget where the items are kept, or that the items are still available since the items may become hidden behind other items (e.g., food) and forgotten about.
Moreover, household refrigerators are often accessible by children. It often is desirable to place sensitive or harmful items away from areas that young children frequent. For example, it is preferred to have certain items kept only in the parent's bathroom, and thus less likely to be encountered by young children.
Further, there may be privacy concerns if certain items are kept in the house's main refrigerator. For example, if a guest opens the household refrigerator they may learn private information about those in the house.
One idea to address these concerns is to provide a mini bar type refrigerator in a bathroom. This is the approach taken by Biszet, where they sell a small floor refrigerator provided with a mirror on its outer door to make it appear to be more suitable for a bathroom environment. However, this concept uses up floor room in the bathroom. Often, there is no extra floor room available for this purpose.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,780 there was a disclosure of a medicine cabinet which could have positioned near it an expansion unit capable of acting as a refrigerator for bathroom items and the like. However, this system required a separate construction for the refrigerator, and was not compact.
A variety of multi-purpose furniture items have been developed for use in rooms outside of the bathroom where there was at least some refrigeration capability provided as part of the furniture item. See e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,554,290, 4,457,140, 5,277,039, 6,640,572, 6,484,512, 6,532,757 and 7,178,354. Most were for positioning on the floor. Even where wall mounting was suggested the designs were not compact, and thus not desirable for bathroom use.
Hence, there is a continuing need for improved medicine cabinets, particularly one which is wall mountable, compact and capable of providing both ambient and refrigerated storage in an ornamentally acceptable manner.